1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an apparatus which puts into practice a method for skinning poultry bodies and thus gaining skin free fillets by such a working process. In particular, use is made of an apparatus including a conveyor, which is normally equipped with carriers, receptacles or the like for holding the poultry bodies to be processed, and tools arranged along the path of that conveyor, which tools perform the skinning and detaching of the meat from the skeleton.
2. Prior Art
Such an apparatus can e.g. be formed by a combination of the devices known from German Patent 3736401 and European Patent Publication 0380714. In such apparatus, the processing of the poultry body is performed by starting from the front side thereof, because the anatomy of the poultry body allows for controlling the tools in a manner to enable a high yield in fillet meat.
In a fillet thus produced it is significant that on the fillet surface previously covered by the skin, fat inclusions or depositions are present which give the impression of "soiling" and thus are considered a quality-reducing feature. Therefore, attempts are made to remove the fat by rather cost-intensive manual processing in order to obtain a final product of the desired high quality. In the course of research and experiments carried out in this context it has been found that the fat depositions are fat components which are deposited below the skin and particularly in the forward area of the poultry body. It has been found as well that these fat components, at the beginning of the skinning process, are initially taken up together with the skin but in the further course of the processing, they are distributed over the skinned surface.
A further deficiency lies in that, quite frequently, the skin is torn during the skinning process, i.e. it is not gained in one piece and generally undamaged as desired, but relatively often skin patches remain on the body. This makes it impossible to use the skin as an edible packaging envelope for various poultry products, and, on the other hand, this also requires cost-intensive post-treatment.
3. Object of the Invention
It is therefore the main object of the present invention to suggest an apparatus which is capable of avoiding the above drawbacks.